


Adora Gets a Cat

by vandalwithoutacause



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: A little angst, Adora names her cat Lord Purrdak, Catra is territorial, F/F, Mostly Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 21:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21417037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vandalwithoutacause/pseuds/vandalwithoutacause
Summary: After they’re finished saving the universe, Catra discovers that Adora has adopted a kitten.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 378





	Adora Gets a Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little voice work I put together during my lunch break at work. Please enjoy?

Theirs is a hesitant, delicate reunion. But that’s the way it’s always been with Catra, in times of significant tension. Adora learned early on to approach from the side, as if unintentionally, avoiding eye contact as she carefully stretches out her hand, allowing Catra sufficient time to sniff at the air between them, relying entirely on her peripheral vision to find acceptable placement for it.

Adora’s been scratched before, she’s been bitten, but Catra’s been hurt as well – by Adora, by Adora’s friends, by her own friends, by herself – so Adora gets it, understands the importance of telegraphing her intent.

The war is over and they stand facing each other over the scorched bones of the dead universe, and they watch the world stitch itself back together as Adora softly runs her dirty fingers through Catra’s matted fur, and they don’t make eye contact, and Catra quietly hisses, and Adora pretends not to notice.

It’s nice.

\---

Three weeks later they complete the journey back to Bright Moon. They’re exhausted, starving, and Adora’s forearms are covered in tiny hairline scratches – but that’s a different story and Adora’s used to it besides.

She’s giving Catra the nickel tour of the castle – here’s the mid-sized common room, here’s the larger of the studies, here’s the first of three dining halls (the Tuesday hall, she calls it) – when Catra’s sensitive nose, no longer plugged full of ash and death and fear, picks up an unwelcome scent. Her hand shoots out, pressing against Adora’s chest as she shoves her back. Her tail lashes the air, her ears flatten back almost flush with the top of her head.

“Adora,” she hisses, “there’s a fucking cat up ahead.”

Adora relaxes from her defensive stance a little, looks up ahead, and realizes they’ve turned the corner to the wing that houses her rooms. She rests a hand – slowly, gently – on Catra’s shoulder, pressing down the fur that’s stood on end. She looks sheepish, when Catra glances back at her. She looks guilty.

Catra’s eyes narrow. “Did you get a fucking cat?”

Adora flushes, staring down at the floor. She takes a half-step back, wrings her hands a little, and stammers, “I, uh, may have, uh, found? A kitten? It was a very hungry kitten, you know, all alone, and he had such sad little eyes –“

“He?!”

“- and he was so obviously abandoned, and it was right after I left the Horde so, you know, so I was lonely –“

“Lonely!”

“- and what was I supposed to do, Catra, just leave him there to starve?” Adora looks up and locks eyes with Catra and her face is full of the old challenge, but Catra’s flashes with the old hurt, the hurt that will be a long time fading, the hurt that they both hope will fully heal someday.

“I’m sorry,” Adora says, and she slowly takes hold of Catra’s hand. Catra sniffs, tasting the air, her hackles bristling and then very slowly relaxing.

“I don’t like it,” she says.

Adora smiles. “You haven’t even met him! Oh, he’ll grow on you, just give it time. He’s so small and cute and you won’t even notice him, I promise.”

But here’s the thing: Adora’s always been a little bit shit at promises.

\---

Just to be safe, Adora enters the room first and ushers little Lord Purrdak into her absurdly huge en suite bathroom, and shuts him in there with all of his personal affects and his entourage of squeaky stuffed mice. He immediately sticks a gray-furred paw under the door and starts feeling around blindly for a way to escape. Adora smiles and squats down to poke him right in the middle of a toe bean, and he tries to grab her fingertip with his razor sharp claws but oh no – she’s too fast for him. His purrs rumble through the door as she walks back to the entryway and lets Catra in.

“This is my room – uh, rooms, these are my rooms,” Adora says, gesturing at the expanse of pastel fluff that comprises her bed chambers. Catra paces around the perimeter and feels generally displeased by the lack of hidey-holes and overall brightness of the place, although she does smile fondly at the sight of the rigid military cot set up next to the enormous fluffy monstrosity that Adora clearly has never slept in.

She ends her walk in front of the closed bathroom door, sneers at the collection of little pink toe beans sticking out from under it, and flicks her tail in disdain. She can hear the little bastard on the other side as he snuffles interestedly at the threshold.

“I thought it would be a good idea to keep you guys separated for a while, so you can get used to each other,” Adora says with a smile, then she bends down and tickles the little bastard’s feet and coos adoringly at him and Catra recoils in disgust.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, absent-mindedly smoothing down her puffed up tail. “You wanna show me where I’m sleeping?”

Adora hops up. “Sure!” she says brightly. “I sent a message ahead while we were on the road and asked them to set something up just down the hall, if that’s okay.”

Catra trails behind distractedly. “Yeah, sure.”

\---

They’ve put her up in another pastel hellscape, but after the sun sets everything washes out into a sort of moldy sepia that’s just about the right color palette for the kind of quiet anxiety Catra intends to settle into for the night.

She sits down on the bed in the middle of the room, another fluffy monstrosity, and curls up around herself, and does her level best to pass out.

But it’s so fucking quiet that she can hear her own heart beat, high and tight in her chest, and every time she swallows and coughs a little to settle it her throat dries out a bit more. She closes her eyes against the thought that she could get up and get a drink of water – there’s a sink right there, drip-dripping somewhere behind her head – but in the heavy darkness of her own consciousness she sees so many familiar faces and not enough of them are still alive.

Catra gets out of bed, stalks around the room in the dark for a moment, has a drink of water, and lays back down.

She’s used to being too warm at night, used to sleeping on top of the blankets and sweating through the night anyway, but here it’s fucking cold so she tucks herself under the blankets and immediately hates the feeling of being entangled, trapped under something and it’s too restrictive, too hot, and now the blood’s rushing up her neck, pooling heavy in her cheeks –

Catra gets up again, walks out, stalks past the guards to a set of rooms down the hall, pauses with her claws against the door.

She can hear someone breathing, shuffling around on the other side.

She gathers her anxiety, calls it courage, and taps on the door.

Adora opens the door. “Catra? Is everything okay?” She takes a measuring look at Catra, sees the tiredness in her eyes, the bristling fur along her shoulders and up her neck. She opens the door a bit further. “Why don’t you come in?”

Catra comes in. She stands in the middle of the room, staring at the floor. She can still smell that damn cat but it’s already a thousand times less terrible in this room. “Can I sleep here tonight?” she asks, plaintive, desperate.

Adora looks at her – friend? ally? whatever – and feels a nervous energy settle high in her gut. “Of course,” she says. “I had tons of trouble sleeping here when I first arrived. Too quiet, right?”

Catra swallows. “Right,” she says, and sits down on the bed as Adora moves to settle onto her cot.

There’s a moment of painfully awkward silence. Adora asks, “Can I get you anything?”

“I’m good,” Catra answers.

“Alright. Well, good night, Catra.” Adora lays back and turns off the light, and Catra is again in the dark, but Adora is only a few feet away, breathing and alive, and apparently that’s all it takes for her anxious mind to unwind enough for her to slip in a heavy, dreamless sleep.

\---

In the middle of the night Catra hears that goddamn cat start mewling at the door he’s trapped behind, then he reaches a paw under the sill, grabs the bottom of the door, and starts shaking the shit out of it. She laughs at his plight and covers her head with a pillow.

\---

They fall into a routine fairly quickly. Every night, Catra retires to her assigned room, curls up on the bed, has a panic attack, and ultimately ends up at Adora’s door. After a couple weeks of that, Adora decides it’s probably time to drop the pretense, and she has some of the guards bring Catra’s things into her room. “Just until you’re comfortable on your own,” she says, for some reason. Catra, for once, doesn’t argue.

After about a month at Bright Moon castle, Adora decides it’s time to make nice with Lord Purrdak.

“I can’t believe you named him that,” Catra cackles as Adora opens the bathroom door and the little gray shorthair creeps tentatively out. When he locks eyes with Catra they both simultaneously raise their hackles and hiss, and he darts under the bed.

Adora shoots Catra a disappointed glance, admonishes, “Catra, you scared him. Play nice.” She sticks her arm under the bed in a futile bid to grab hold of Lord Purrdak, but he’s well out of reach. “Ugh, he’ll be under there for hours.”

Catra smirks. “Guess he knows who the boss is,” she says.

“Mm, yes, good job, establishing dominance over a nine pound housecat,” Adora retorts. “Come on, let’s go get lunch. Maybe he’ll come out by the time we get back.”

\---

He does not come out until after they’ve both gone to bed for the night. Catra is in her usual spot at the foot of Adora’s previously unused bed, nestled in a puddle of blankets that she’s wrapped around herself but not actually under, when she hears soft padding footfalls. She opens her eyes and sees Lord Purrdak hopping silently onto Adora’s cot, curling up next to her face, and almost immediately falling asleep. Catra growls, low in her throat, but neither of them notice.

\---

She wakes late the next day. The sun slants in through the window, warming her fur, and she feels absolutely no desire to get out of bed. She stretches languorously. As she returns fully to consciousness, she registers the sound of Adora, sat on the floor across the room, dragging a feather on a stick across the floor.

Almost immediately her tail starts twitching furiously and she sits up into a crouch, pupils blown and arms and legs tense, preparing to pounce – 

Lord Purrdak shoots out from under the bed, latching onto the feather-on-a-stick. Catra feels like an idiot. She watches Adora play with her dumb cat for a few minutes before she gets up out of bed, walks across the room, and pointedly sits down on Adora’s lap, rubbing her cheek against her shoulder.

Adora blushes bright red. “Catra – what are you –“

“Don’t worry about it,” Catra mutters, “just don’t want Lord Shithead over here getting any funny ideas.”

Adora sets down the feather-on-a-stick and flops back onto the floor, dragging Catra with her. Lord Purrdak leaps upon the feather, snatching it up into a death roll, and begins victoriously clawing the shit out of it.

Adora cards her fingers through Catra’s hair, and Catra starts quietly purring against her shoulder, and they lay curled up together in a warm sunbeam for a little while.

It’s nice.

\---

It takes a full year for Catra and Lord Purrdak to learn to tolerate each other, but Adora reflects that that’s actually pretty quick by cat standards. After all she and Catra went to war for several years after just one fight. So, progress.

She wakes up one morning – she’s sleeping in the fluffy bed now, ever since Catra succumbed to a fit of jealously and tried to curl up next to her on the tiny cot in Lord Purrdak’s usual spot – and she’s got a face full of Catra’s absurd mane, and a couple of tiny gray cat feet kneading the blanket at the bottom of the bed. Somehow, despite it all or perhaps because of it, she’s got this weird tiny family now.

Adora closes her eyes and goes back to sleep, and doesn’t wake back up until it’s almost noon, and there’s really nothing wrong with that at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Cats are territorial, y'all.


End file.
